


More Surprised Than Me

by IronDadStan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Hurt Tony Stark, Kidnapped Tony Stark, Light Angst, M/M, Possessive Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Has A Heart, stupid hydra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:22:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28728027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronDadStan/pseuds/IronDadStan
Summary: "No one is quite sure what it was that flipped the switch from enemies to best friends, but now they wouldn’t trade it for the world.Now, there was no Tony without Steve.Or Steve without Tony.They were destined to change the others' lives and no one was more surprised than the men themselves."
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 153





	More Surprised Than Me

**Author's Note:**

> A thank you to my lovely best friend @ParkrStark for encouraging me and my crazy prompts. 
> 
> Also thank you for being my Beta.

They are always together.

In the beginning it was the exact opposite, they hated each other. Couldn’t stand to be in the same room with each other for more than five minutes. But, then one day it changed.

They both realized there was something about the other, that they were destined to be in each other’s life.

No one is quite sure what it was that flipped the switch from enemies to best friends, but now they wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Now, there was no Tony without Steve.

Or Steve without Tony.

They were destined to change the others' lives and no one was more surprised than the men themselves.

***

It was a cold, snowy day in January, Steve and Tony had the day off from SHIELD shenanigans and Avengers duties. So, they were spending their free time the way they both preferred. Together.

Tony, spending most of his day working on upgrades for his suit, and some dabbling in R&D stuff for Stark Industries. While Steve lounged on his couch in Tony’s lab, sketching and doodling. With breaks to go make him and Tony food, of course.

Tony tossed his screwdriver down on the workshop table and turned around to face the bigger man, who was sitting spread eagle on the couch with a sketchbook in his hands.

“Steve?” He said, raising his left eyebrow.

“Yes, Tony?” was his cheerful response.

“Can I be blunt for a second?”

“Are you ever anything else?” Steve asked with a chuckle.

Tony fondly rolled his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Please do, Tony, you know you can tell me anything,” and with that, Steve sat his sketchbook down and made his way across the lab.

“Why don’t we date? We kinda already are.. Like unofficially.. I guess? But, we are always together. We sleep together most nights, we snuggle during movie night every Tuesday, we share meals, hell, we’ve shared a toothbrush too many times to count. What’s keeping us from taking that step?”

Steve smiled brightly at Tony, knowing that Tony Stark was the person he was put on this earth to love. He’d known that for the past 3 years of their friendship.

Steve knows that Tony is the only one he wants.

But, that’s exactly why he can’t have him.

Steve closed the distance between the two of them and took the smaller man’s hands into his.

“Tony.. What I feel for you, I won’t ever feel for anyone else. Because, I want _you_ so fucking bad. I know if I let myself have this, ” He said and gestured to the two of them. “If I let myself have you.. Tony.. Someone is gonna use you against me, some villain will come along and hurt you just to get to me. Because they’ll know that you, Tony Stark, are the most important thing to me in this whole universe. And I can’t do that, I can’t risk losing you, Tony. I can’t risk _you_.”

He wiped the tears from the smaller man’s face and smiled a broken smile.

Tony took a deep, watery breath and tightly closed his eyes, as if he was willing away his tears.

“They use us against each other already, Steve.. Why would this be any different?” Tony said and broke his left hand away from Steve’s to catch a stray tear falling down the taller man’s face.

“Because, doll, once you’re _mine_. Once I have you, _Tony_.. I would burn the world to get you back.. And that’s.. That’s exactly why we can’t.”

In that moment they both realized that their love was something that may never become true, because if they did everything would change.

They fell into each other’s arms and cried about what would never be.

***

Months passed from that day in the lab.

They both tried to pretend those events had never unfolded and tried to continue the friendship that neither man believed they deserved.

Steve and Tony saw it, and ignored it. The team saw it, they just didn’t know what it was. This unspoken tension between them. Not enough tension for anyone to notice, but, if you really knew the two men, you could see it.

But like water on a stove, they had a boiling point.

A mission out in Russia. Break into the Hydra base, burn the weapons and take the new blueprints.

Tony and Steve made their way to the mechanics lab, while the team split up to investigate the Hydra base.

“How long is this gonna take?” Steve asked, keeping his guard up at the lab’s entrance, while Tony did his hacking thing.

“You can’t rush genius, my polar bear.”

Steve smiled fondly and rolled his eyes.

“Polar bear? Really?”

“Well, I don’t know another land creature that spends that much time in the arctic ocean like, you did, my dear.”

“Just keep hacking, Tony,” he said fondly.

“I could call you, Captain Penguin, but I like Polar Bear better.”

And with that Tony continued to hack into Hydra’s database and Steve stood guard.

“ _AH HA!_ You can’t keep the great Tony Stark out of anything. Honestly their firewall is a joke,” Tony said and handed Steve the flash drive, which Steve placed into his pocket on his abdomen. Which Tony preferred to call his ‘Ab bag”

“You can computer talk me later, Tony, let’s get out of here”

“I’m gonna hold you to that, Polar bear.”

And of course that was the moment it all went to shit.

All Steve remembers is a white flash, red flames, the back of his head slamming into the grey concrete wall and then nothing.

“Steve! _Stevie!_ Come on, buddy! Wake up, we gotta get you outta here”

He blinked his eyes open to a panicked and bloody Bucky in front of him and a pissed off Black Widow in his comms.

Steve looked around the room looking for anything red and gold. Where was Tony? All he saw was destruction and flames.

“T.. Tony? To-Tony! Where’s Tony?”

“Come on, punk, we gotta get you on the jet so Bruce can look at your injuries.”

And with that, Bucky pulled Steve to his feet and wrapped his metal arm around Steve’s waist.

Steve jerked his throbbing head looking around the room, looking for any sign of Tony.

“Nu.. No.. Buck, where.. Where is _Tony?_ ” Steve slurred as blood dripped from his mouth.

“Nat, get the fuck down here. I can’t do this,” Bucky said ignoring his questions as he pulled the super soldier through the flaming Hydra base.

“Steve, just breath,” Nat said softly into the coms.

“TONY. TONY!! TONY? TONY, _ANSWER ME_... _TONY?_ ” Steve called out with a broken voice all the way out of the base.

Natasha and Thor meet Bucky and Steve at the quinjet and help him get Steve into the jet and onto one of the cots.

Steve frantically looked around the jet, seeing everyone but that red and gold. Those colors that brought him peace and comfort every time he saw them.

He saw Bucky, Sam, Clint, Bruce, Natasha and Thor. But, no red and gold, no Tony.

“Somebody better tell me where the fuck Tony is,” Steve said clenching his jaw.

“Tell me. Where the fuck is _Tony!?”_ he commanded.

Clint, Sam and Bruce visibly flinched at his tone of voice and Natasha took a step forward.

“The grenade that went off.. It also sent off an EMP signal we’ve never seen. Tony’s suit went offline and when we got to the lab.. Tony was gone..”

Steve jumped up from the cot, injuries be damned and turned his face to the ceiling of the jet and said.

“JARVIS, track it.”

“I am on it, sir."

“SHIELD is already trying to track the reactor. They haven’t found shit. There’s no signal Steve, we’ve already tried.” Clint said

“No.. This.. SHIELD can’t track this. Only Tony, JARVIS, and I can track this.”

“What do you mean?” Bruce asked

“Tony and I, we came up with a way to track one another. Took us a couple days, and by us I mean Tony. But, we both have trackers implanted in our bodies.”

The team shared a few confused glances and Clint turned back to Steve.

“Thanks for sharing?”

“No, don’t do that. You all know if anyone on the team gets taken, it’s 98% of the time me or Tony. So, we decided to do something about it. We are all equally important, don’t take this the wrong way. It’s just a fact.” Steve said

“He’s right,” Sam said, nodding his head. “He and Tony are the ones always getting kidnapped. They’re the leaders of the team. Plus, equally popular public figures.”

“JARVIS? How’s it going?” Steve said, turning his attention back to the more important matter at hand.

“Narrowing down the location now, I’ve sent the broad coordinates to the Quinjets system, you are on your way to Sir as we speak Captain”

“Thank you, JARVIS.”

“Wait, wait. Where are these trackers implanted? Any kidnapper worth their salt is gonna check the basic area. Neck, arms, and chest. They’ll just dig it out, Steve.” Bruce injected.

“You can’t dig these out, Bruce.” Steve said as Bucky handed him a warm, damn cloth for him to wipe some blood off of his face.

“What is it, up your ass or something?” Clint said with a chuckle.

“You swallowed it?” Thor questioned.

“What? No, it would just pass through," Sam injected.

“This is Tony we are talking about here people, he’s smarter than that.” Bucky said, raising an eyebrow..

“Nanotechnology. That is all I’m legally allowed to say,” Steve said with a chuckle.

“Okay.. Did Tony swallow Nanites too?”

“No, Tony’s is underneath the base of the Arc reactor. It’s transparent. You can’t see it with the human eye.”

“Okay.. So wait?! Are you telling me you have nanites just living in your body?” Bruce said.

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Captain, I have pinpointed the location of sir, a warehouse in Kazen, Russia.”

“Thank God, put this jet into overdrive. We need to get Stevie his fella back.” Bucky said and led Steve over to the cot.

“What Bucky said,” Steve said, slowly sitting down.

“While we wait, let’s get some of this debris out of your abdomen huh?” Bruce said, pulling up a chair and gestured to Steve’s stomach.

“You do have an hour until you reach the location of Sir, it might be best to listen to Dr. Banner.” JARVIS spoke up.

Steve rolled his eyes and welcomed Bruce over with his tweezers and gauze.

“Thank you, JARVIS. But unlike your father, I do understand the importance of medical help.”

“BULLSHIT,” He heard Bucky and Sam from the other side of the jet.

“I echo Sergeant Barnes and Wilson.” JARVIS said and damn if an AI could chuckle, JARVIS would have.

***

They were on the outskirts of Kazen, about a mile from the warehouse where Tony was being held, they would be landing in the next couple minutes.

“Listen up, Avengers. We have one goal here. Get Tony Stark. Burn anything that gets in your way. We get Tony, we get out. Have I made myself clear?”

“Shouldn't we call SHIELD? Have some back up and someone there for arrests?”

“Kill anyone you see. You don’t take Tony Stark and get away unscathed.” and with that Steve opened the hatch to the plane and jumped out.

“There’s not one ounce of self-preservation in his body,” Bucky said and followed Steve out of the jet.

**

They go into the warehouse guns blazing, lightning striking, and hulk smashing. Nat and Clint to the control room, and the rest of the team searching the base.

After less than 10 minutes of taking Hydra agents down, Nat yelled into the coms:

“Steve! Floor 3, room 5B. Stay alert, we will follow.”

“Halfway there,” Steve said, taking off running, knocking out Hydra goons on his way down the hallway.

Upon door 5B, Steve took a deep breath and threw his body against the door. The steel door came down and Steve saw Tony’s battered form hanging from the ceiling.

Hung from his wrists, his face so drenched in blood you couldn’t see his tan Italian skin. He was dressed in nothing but his black boxer briefs. His left leg drenched in red as a knife was jammed into his upper thigh.

“Tony..” He said softly, making his way over to the battered man.

He saw the Arc Reactor glowing in Tony’s chest and he felt like he could breathe again.

Steve lifted the smaller man’s body, taking the weight off his wrists, and used his free hand to cut the binds from the ceiling, catching the smaller man’s slack body in his arms.

“I got him, I got him. He’s breathing, but barely.” Steve said into his com as he laid Tony’s body onto the ground.

“Base is almost clear, we are on our way to you to help with extraction.” Bucky said

Steve pulled his hanker-chief out of his ‘ab bag’, and tied it tight above the wound on Tony’s thigh. He placed a kiss to the smaller mans head and said:

“I told you I would burn the world for you Tony Stark, _I told you._ ”

Tears fell down his cheeks and he pulled Tony close to his chest.

“I’m gonna get you outta here, doll, I’m gonna keep you safe.”

As he held Tony tighter to his chest, never wanting to let go of the smaller man. He heard a groan fall from Tony’s lips.

“St.. St-Steve?” Tony said, cracking his eye that wasn’t swollen shut.

“Yeah baby, yeah baby. It’s me you’re safe now. I got you, doll.”

“Ima.. Sl.. Sleep, I like that,” Tony slurred as blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

“No, no. Tony, listen. Hey. Don’t sleep, stay awake doll, I promise.. I'm.. I’m gonna take out on a date as soon as we get home.”

With that promise Tony’s eye opened a little wider, and cracked a broken smile.

“Date?”

“Yeah doll, a date. Like you deserve. Like I should have done years ago.” Steve said softly and placed another kiss to the man’s hair.

“Wh-What about burning th..The world?” Tony said and Steve couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I’ll burn the world for you any-day doll, any-day.”

“Good, I’d.. I’d like that.”

Nat, Bucky and Sam walked in with a medical bag.

Tony’s bruised and bloody hand landed on Steve’s cheek and with a smile Tony said:

“I can’t wait to suck your dick....” and with that he passed out.

Steve laughed and stood to his feet with the smaller man bundled to his chest.

“Let’s get my fella home, yeah?” and with that he carried Tony out the door.

“Okay.. that I did not need to hear.”


End file.
